


Artistic Grace

by Josh89



Series: NYC Grace [9]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, And they're only going to get more interesting from here, Case Fic, Co-workers, Crimes & Criminals, Detectives, Don't copy to another site, F/F, F/M, Not Canon Compliant - The Trials of Apollo, Post-The Heroes of Olympus, Things are getting exciting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 16:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21211319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josh89/pseuds/Josh89
Summary: Tobias and Aaron finally get to interview the art curator Jason Gardner and learn some very interesting information about their victim.





	Artistic Grace

“Ruby”.  
Tobias’s other partner glanced up at him from her desk. “Need something?”  
“Have you arranged that meeting with Jason Gardner yet?”  
She nodded, handing a piece of notepaper with the meeting details and address on it to the blonde detective. “I actually just got off the phone with Natasha Bedingfield, his assistant. There’s a meeting arranged in his office at the gallery for forty-five minutes from now”.  
Tobias smiled gratefully, folding the notepaper and slipping it into his pocket. “Thank you”.  
“Happy to help. Oh, and maybe after this case is over, we could go get a drink or something and talk about old times… Just the two of us”.  
I should have known it was too good to last. “Thanks for the offer, Ruby, but I’m going to have to pass. I’m still not exactly eager to get back together with you, especially since I’m still bitter that you cheated on me in the first place which ended our original relationship. Besides, I already have plans with someone else once we close this case”.  
Tobias could tell that his response had piqued his ex-girlfriend’s curiosity, but was pleasantly surprised when she didn’t say anything aside from a quiet “Oh”.  
The blonde nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, me and Aaron are going to head over to the gallery to meet with Mr. Gardner now. Why don’t you make a start on searching through Jennifer Reynold’s financials, see if any unusually large deposits or withdrawals leap out at you?”  
“You got it”.  
As she swivelled her chair to face her keyboard and starting typing, her fingers practically flying across the keyboard, Tobias turned and headed for the elevator. He squeezed in just as the doors were about to slide shut, joining his partner, who grinned at him. “Almost didn’t make it that time, huh, Toby?”  
Tobias rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Ruby asked me to get drinks with her after this case. She threw me off guard for a couple of seconds”.  
Aaron raised an eyebrow. “Seriously, she’s still trying to ask you to get back together with her? Even considering you’ve said ‘No’ the past fifteen times?”  
“Seriously, yeah. I genuinely thought that she’d decided to stop trying and move on, but knowing her I guess I should have seen this coming. I’m not even sure why I was surprised, to be entirely honest”.  
“You thought she’d finally moved on” Tobias’s black-haired partner observed, his voice quiet.  
“I did, yes. There was never a possibility that I would get back together with her after she cheated on me, but I guess I assumed that she had finally got the message. Now, if you don’t mind, can we move on from this topic and on to something that doesn’t concern Ruby?”  
“Of course we can. What did you have in mind?”  
“How’s Chloe? I haven’t seen her around for a while”  
As Tobias had expected, Aaron’s eyes lit up at the mention of his girlfriend. “She’s good, actually. She’s been in San Francisco for the past week at a conference on updated crime-fighting technology and anti-hack methods”.  
As the doors slid open, both detectives stepped out into the lobby, waving quickly to the desk sergeant as they passed by his desk and passed through the door to the stairwell that led to the precinct’s garage. “The same one Lara Parks mentioned she was going to?” Tobias queried, recalling the emails that the precinct’s technical administrator had sent en masse, all relating to the fact that she and many of the NYPD’s tech experts would be unavailable for the next few days due to being in San Francisco.  
“The very same. Anyway, their plane gets back tomorrow night, so I’m meeting her at the airport and then we’re going to go out for dinner at a nice restaurant, go back to my place, curl up on the couch together, and watch Netflix until we fall asleep”.  
“That might actually be the perfect date for the two of you”.  
As they stopped in front of the car, Tobias pulled the car keys from his back pocket and quickly pressed the unlock button, then pulled the driver’s side door open and slipped in, settling into the leather seat. God, I love these Dodge Chargers. Reaching over and pushing the passenger-side door open, his partner gave him a grateful nod as he slipped into the car as well. “Thanks”.  
“Yeah, well, you’d do the same for me”.  
“If you ever let me drive” came the reply.  
Tobias smirked, quickly doing up his seatbelt before pausing to wait for his partner to do the same. “Hey. My car, my rules”.  
“Technically it’s not actually your car, it’s the department’s…”  
The blonde detective gave his black-haired best friend a playful glare. “Shush”.  
Pulling out into the street, Tobias quickly switched on the GPS, keying in the location of the art gallery where they were going. “Thank god the gallery isn’t too far away from here”.  
Aaron nodded thoughtfully. “Agreed. I’m curious to see what we can learn about Jennifer Reynolds last hours and this mysterious package she was supposed to deliver. And hopefully that will also tell us exactly why someone would kill for it”.  
Tobias nodded, his eyes flickering to the GPS briefly before returning to the road ahead of them. “Hopefully”.  
“On another note… Have you got anything planned for tomorrow night? It’s just I told you what I was planning on doing with Chloe, but we got to the car before I could ask you whether you had any plans yourself”.  
Tobias nodded. “I do have plans, yeah. I have a date with Monica Osbourne”.  
His partner looked puzzled for a minute or so, obviously trying to picture the girl Tobias had just named. After two minutes of no response, the blonde sighed. “The girl from the alleyway last night. You and Ruby took her statement in regards to the Brian Andrews arrest”.  
The other man’s face cleared. “Oh. Tall girl, probably slightly younger than us, who looks like a real-life Lily Potter?”  
“The very same”.  
Aaron grinned. “Yeah, I had a feeling you’d end up going out with her. In fact, when Ruby and I met you guys to take the statement in the first place I secretly wondered if the two of you had been secretly dating and just not told any of us yet. Frankly, I’m glad that’s not the case”.  
Tobias nodded, smiling softly. “Me too. Anyway, I’m picking her up from her apartment tomorrow night, then we’re going to go have dinner together before seeing Forbidden Planet at the Angelika”.  
“Sounds like a good date”.  
“It should be”.  
They continued their conversation for a while as Tobias drove, and before long they were pulling into a parking lot just outside the gallery they were looking for. “The Gardner Gallery” Aaron said quietly, reading the gallery’s name off the neon-lit sign.  
Tobias stopped the car, quickly reaching over and undoing his seatbelt before slipping out of the car and closing the door behind him. “Indeed. Now, let’s get to this meeting with Jason Gardner”.  
As they stepped into the lobby, the walls of which were painted a warm, sunny, yellow in colour, the blonde-haired woman sitting at the front desk looked up from her computer, smiling warmly at them. “Hi, how can I help you two today?”  
Tobias unclipped his badge from his belt, holding it out. “I’m Detective Grace and this is my partner Detective Miles from the 12th Precinct. We have a meeting with Jason Gardner to discuss the murder of a woman who was working for him recently”.  
The blonde-haired receptionist, who couldn’t have been more than 25 years old, quickly typed something on the keyboard in front of her, before nodding. “Okay. Yes, I can see the appointment on our schedule here. Alright, go on through. Go through the door on your left, and then take the second door on your right into a lobby that looks like this one but with orange walls instead of yellow. Tell the woman in there why you’re here, and she’ll let you into Mr. Gardner’s office”.  
“Simple enough. Thank you for your help” Tobias shrugged, clipping his badge back onto his belt beside his holstered handgun before turning and heading for the door that the woman had indicated, with his partner right behind him.  
“You think that Jason Gardner had anything to do with Jennifer’s death?” Aaron wondered as soon as they were through the door.  
Tobias shrugged. “I hope not. From what I can remember of him, he’s a good man and a popular figure in the art community, as well as the head of several programs aimed at struggling artists. I’d hate to have to arrest him”.  
“We do what we have to do” Aaron said quietly.  
“True”.  
They stepped through the second door on the right into a room that looked very much like the lobby they had just left, and Tobias strode towards the desk, flashing his badge as he did so. “NYPD. Are you Natasha Bedingfield?”  
The red-haired woman sitting behind the desk looked up at the sound of his voice, nodding. She couldn’t have been much more than thirty years old, maybe 35 at the oldest. “That would be me. What can I do for you?”  
“I’m Detective Tobias Grace. This is my partner, Detective Aaron Miles. We have a meeting with your boss, Jason Gardner, to discuss a woman that we believe may have been working for him recently”.  
The woman glanced at her computer screen, tapping something on her keyboard, before nodding. “Of course, right this way”.  
She stood, leading the two detectives down (yet another) short hallway, knocking briskly on an oak door. “Mr. Gardner, there are two detectives from the NYPD here to see you”.  
“Show them in”.  
“As you wish”.  
Natasha opened the door and gestured for Tobias and his partner to enter before shutting the door and walking back down the hallway to her desk. Tobias glanced around the office that he and Aaron found themselves in. The walls were painted a simple white colour, and the floor was covered by a simple brown rug. A desk made of dark wood was in the exact center of the room, with two simple wood and leather chairs on the side nearest to us. On the side of the desk opposite was a standard swivel chair of dark-brown leather. Much of the space on the wall behind the desk was taken up by a large abstract painting composed entirely of different shades of blue. “Well, that is a rather unusual painting to say the least” Aaron muttered.  
“I know. Hard to believe that this sort of thing passes for art these days” Tobias replied in agreement.  
“Can I help you gentlemen?”  
The man behind the desk stood and walked around to them, hand outstretched. He was wearing a blue short-sleeved short and long white pants, along with brown loafers. Tobias took his hand, noting with satisfaction that the other man’s grip was firm and strong. As their hands separated, and Aaron stepped forward to shake the curator’s hand, Tobias slipped his badge from his belt. “You’re Jason Gardner?”  
The other brown-haired man nodded, taking off his sunglasses and folded them carefully before setting them aside, his grey eyes steady and unreadable. “I am. And you’re the detectives from the 12th Precinct. My assistant told me you’d want to talk to me about a murder?”  
“We would like that, yes. I’m Tobias Grace, and this is Aaron Miles. We need to talk to you about the death of Jennifer Reynolds”.  
The curator looked stunned for a few seconds as he collapsed back into his chair. “Shit… She’s dead? How long ago?”  
Tobias glanced quickly at his watch, trying to calculate exactly that. “We found her at roughly 1:45 this morning, and our coroner estimated that her time of death was an hour before that. Now, if you don’t mind, we have a few questions of our own to ask you. How well did the two of you know each other?”  
“Not very well. She came in here with her girlfriend every couple of days to look around. We chatted a bit, but I would never really have classed us as friends”.  
Wait, Jennifer Reynolds had a girlfriend? Now there’s some brand-new information. Well, I guess that that warrants another talk with Karen Osbourne, since if anyone knew who our victim’s girlfriend was, it would have to be her. “And yet the two of you knew each other well enough that you trusted her enough to ask her to pick up a package that you needed delivered to you last night instead of just going yourself” Tobias pointed out.  
“Okay, yeah, we were friends”. The curator nodded, gesturing to the two chairs in front of his desk. “You might as well sit down, it’s kind of a long story”.  
Once Tobias and his fellow detective had done so, Jason sighed. “She attended an event here a couple of years ago, a few months before she and her girlfriend got together. We were celebrating the launch of a fantastic new artist’s work”.  
Tobias nodded. “I remember my parents telling me about her work when they last came here with my sisters. Alexis Clarke. She’s widely known for painting stunningly realistic landscapes and portraits, almost like you’re looking at a photograph”.  
“That’s right. We’d just starting exhibiting her work here, and the gallery had never been that popular before, so we decided that we’d hold an event to celebrate. Jennifer was one of the first to arrive, and we spent most of the night talking and admiring the paintings before she left at around 12:30 am”  
“And the two of you kept in touch?” Aaron queried.  
“Yes. We hold charity auctions every fortnight, and she never missed one. She never actually bought anything, but that didn’t stop her from coming to the auctions anyway. And frequently she’d come in even when there wasn’t an auction on. She’d come in early afternoon, usually just after noon. We would sit and talk for a while, admire a couple of paintings, and enjoy a cup of coffee together before she would leave to head home and get changed for work. We were friends, and we both knew that was all we were ever going to be, so we trusted each other immensely”.  
Tobias and Aaron glanced at each other. This was interesting. Very interesting. “I see. And where does the package come into this?” Tobias asked.  
“The package contains photographic proof of art forgery”.  
Tobias’s mouth dropped open. “Forgery? You’re sure?”.  
“I am. One of my sources, who for this conversation will go unnamed, told me he saw lights in an abandoned workshop he was passing on his way home one night. Being a curious fellow by nature, he couldn’t resist looking inside, and he saw at least five people, all of whom were painting”.  
Aaron looked puzzled. “That doesn’t sound all that suspicious, honestly”.  
“Oh no? He could make out the closest painting to the door, and it was practically an exact copy of one that hangs in the gallery at this very second. And I know the original is hanging here in the gallery because I personally received it from the artist herself, the night before my source reported seeing the forgery”.  
Tobias leaned forward. “So, how does Ms. Reynolds fit into all this?”  
“She and my assistant were the only ones I trusted enough to tell about the forgery investigation. My source kept us informed on the activities in the workshop, and I decided to ask him to take some photos that showed the faces of the forgers and their activities so we could go to the police. Last night I called Jennifer and asked her if she would mind meeting our source to pick up the package that contained the photos and bring them back to me. She said she’d be delighted to and that she’d leave work early so she could go home and change before she had to meet the source at 11:30. I kept the gallery open much later than usual for her, but she never showed up”.  
Tobias sat quietly for a minute, letting all that the curator had just said sink in. “Thank you, Mr Gardner, that was very informative. We just have a couple more questions”.  
The older man nodded. “Of course, anything you need to know”.  
“What was your source’s name?”  
There was another sigh, this one reluctant. The curator clearly didn’t want to answer the question. “Fletcher Carney. That’s the name of my source”.  
“How do you spell Carney, exactly?” Tobias queried.  
“C-A-R-N-E-Y”.  
Tobias glanced at his partner, who nodded back and quickly tapped in a couple of words on his phone before holding it up for the blonde to see, showing an open Notes app with the words ‘Forgery Source - Fletcher Carney’ displayed on it. “Next question. Did anyone ever accompany Jennifer to these fortnightly charity auctions?”  
“Now that you mention it, yes. The first few months that she attended the auctions she did so on her own, but after a while she started bringing a beautiful red-haired woman with her. The other woman always wore a certain floor-length green silk dress, I distinctly remember it because it was almost the exact same shade of green as her eyes. It was obvious from the way that they looked at each other that they were dating, or at least had feelings for each other”.  
“And how old was the other woman?”  
“She was the same age as Ms Reynolds, give or take a couple of months”  
Red hair? Green eyes? About the same age as our victim? Okay, we need to talk to Karen Osbourne again. And preferably quite soon. “What time did you leave the gallery last night? We’re trying to establish a basic timeline of events that occurred”.  
“Natasha and I left at the same time, approximately 1:15 am this morning, after I realized that Jennifer wasn’t going to show up”.  
“And what did you do after that?”  
“I dropped her off at her apartment and went home to get some sleep”.  
“Is there anyone that can confirm this, aside from your assistant?” Aaron queried.  
“You don’t think I’d actually kill her, do you? I needed those pictures so that I could have actual photographic proof of art forgery before going to the police. I would never have killed her” the older man replied calmly.  
“We don’t think you killed her, no. But I’m sure you understand that as detectives we must explore every possibility. Is there anyone, aside from your assistant, that can confirm your whereabouts last night?”  
“I’ll have Malcolm Tethers, my security chief, give you a copy of all of the security camera footage from last night. And a copy of my car’s GPS log. And you might want to talk to my wife, Elizabeth. She was still awake when I got home”.  
Tobias nodded, satisfied, and got to his feet. “Thank you, Mr. Gardner. You’ve been most co-operative”.  
“My pleasure”.  
The curator stood, shaking the hands of both detectives. “Catch whoever did this, detectives. Please. Jennifer Reynolds did not deserve to die”.  
Tobias nodded. “We will. We’ll let you know when we’ve caught the person responsible for her death”.  
And with those words, he turned and walked towards the door out of the curator’s office, his partner right behind him.


End file.
